My thoughts: this was not an accident. This was testing the waters.

I wonder what the person who absolutely insisted to me yesterday that this wasn’t about black people in general would have to say about this…

  • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    142
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    3 months ago

    If it’s in your regular enough vocabulary to “come out accidentally” you are a racist.

    You also can’t ‘unsay’ a racial slur as much as my ex can’t ‘unfuck’ someone.

    What’s also neat is that it also shows one’s intelligence. If you give him a pass “oh he said he was sorry” you’re a racist AND dumb.

    • tabarnaski@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      24
      ·
      3 months ago

      (…) you’re a racist AND dumb.

      To a large extent you’re racist because you’re dumb.

      For the last few months they’ve traded their dog whistles for blow horns. More and more hatred is being normalized.

    • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      28
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      Important caveat. It’s become a common word in some varieties of black-american english and black people aren’t racist for using it.

      • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        18
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        Not really, because he wasn’t a Black guy talking to Black people. He knew what he did.

        It’s a racial slur. That’s it. Don’t use it, don’t think it, don’t think you can say it with your Black friends.

        • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          10
          ·
          edit-2
          3 months ago

          Obviously it’s fucked up how it was used in the above article.

          And obviously if you’re not black you should never use it. But you’re assuming I’m not black with your comment.

              • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                8
                ·
                3 months ago

                Who was it intended toward?

                Someone that hasn’t watched TV since the 1980’s? ChatGPT, for when someone invariably turns it loose on the fediverse?

                It’s not niche as a concept. Your explanation is known worldwide.
                Its inclusion in the discourse is unwarranted.

                Next time you feel the need to add a disclaimer that justifies/explains/adds caveats to racist language: fucking don’t.

      • USSMojave@startrek.website
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        There’s a reason a distinction is made between how black people use it and when the “hard r” is in the pronunciation

  • PugJesus@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    115
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    “I didn’t say anything of the sort (unless the audience liked it)”

      • MudMan@fedia.io
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        I don’t know. I mean, he does sound like he catches himself, and he isn’t that good of an actor. But then, who the hell has that just… ready to go to the point where it just blurts out by itself? Like, how often do you have to say that out loud for it to just hijack your train of thought? It’s almost less damning if he did it on purpose, honestly.

      • Kalothar
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        I changed my mind after putting in earphones and listening to it more clearly

        • PlantJam@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          10
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          3 months ago

          The video also looks like he’s making an M sound (closed lips) than an N sound (open lips). Grammatically, I also don’t think including “Haitian” makes sense if the next word is a slur.

          I’m all for calling out the actual content on the conversation as the absolute nonsense that it is, but this specific headline seems like a bit of a reach.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      3 months ago

      Even during the Reconstruction Era, Indiana was both staunchly Republican and full of the KKK. And there was no shortage of racism irrespective of party in Congress during the height of the Civil War. The myth is that the Radical Republicans of the 1860s and 70s represented the party population as a whole, rather than a vocal minority within an ascendant movement that managed to squeeze in a few good reforms before Hayes sold it all down the river.

      Republicans barely abolished slavery even with half the country in Time-Out. And they were crucified for it in elections to come.

    • Omega_Jimes
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      3 months ago

      Yeah, sometimes there’s something else outside could have been saying but not here.

      Here it’s clear as day. And the host says nothing at all, which says a ton about her.

  • MeaanBeaan@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    34
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    Even if this was just an “innocent” slip up it’s not like what he said wouldn’t have been racist otherwise. The dude is defending the false claims about Haitian immigrants. It’s still racist.

  • Rentlar
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    29
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    Haitian mig-r? Lol. Clearly the man is too used to saying the N word off public broadcast.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    ·
    3 months ago

    My thoughts: this was not an accident. This was testing the waters.

    The staff at the National Review have always been neo-confederate trash and I have no trouble believing Lowry simply uses this word on such a routine basis that it slipped out during an interview with another arch-conservative media figure.

    These folks are racists and it shouldn’t be seen as surprising when they show all the symptoms of a bigoted mind.

  • UmeU@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    3 months ago

    Really sounds like it starts with an N and not an M so I don’t buy the mispronunciation story.

    Also there is the fact that neither immigrants nor migrants ends in ‘gger’

    He prolly had a bet with a friend that he would slip in an N word.

    • Avatar_of_Self@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      3 months ago

      I saw the dumb defender say he was conflating immigrant and migrant but I replayed that part a dozen times. It really, really sounds like an ‘N’ as the first letter. It definitely was not him beginning to pronounce ‘immgr’. You can plainly hear it.

      But even if we gave him the benefit of the doubt, the fact that Megyn Kelly completely ignored it and the fact that he didn’t apologize immediately and explain it says volumes about both of them. Why didn’t Kelly even say anything? Maybe she’s so used to hearing it in her circles, maybe even saying it, that it didn’t even register as something unusual to her and she didn’t notice it.

    • WoahWoah@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      It seems seems dubious to me too. But the ‘gr’ in migrants would sound roughly the same as ‘gger.’ The problem is… well. He seems to start it with an ‘n’ and then also mis-inflects the ‘i’?

      It would be like trying to say ‘clickable’ and instead saying ‘slacker.’

      Mad sus.

  • leadore@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    I wondered if this might turn out to be somebody reading something into something, but Nope, he said it clear as a bell. You don’t accidentally say that unless you’re thinking it. This is obviously a word this guy uses frequently, and he even seems proud of himself for it.

      • wjrii@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        I was all but bending over backwards trying to hear how it might have been just a slip, bringing to bear the fact that both words have a nasal consonant and hard ‘g’ sounds, but… nope. He enunciates an ‘n’ again, clearly after he’s done saying “Haitian” and therefore where it doesn’t belong, and then he gets all the way to the hard ‘-er’, a “murmur diphthong” that simply doesn’t exist in ‘immigrant’ or ‘migrant’. The most charitable explanation with any plausibility whatsoever is that the n-word is a part of his spoken vocabulary and he failed to censor himself quickly enough.

        Fuckin’ gross.

        • cygnus
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          3 months ago

          Same, the embedded media is dead for me too.

      • Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        16
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        Having it clearly explained to you but still not letting it go. Clearly the example Lemmy mods should be aspiring to.

        Edit: The point is that a resurrected MLK jr. could have said the same thing Trump said about Kamala and still had it refuted. Racism is besides the point and requires a whole bunch of supporting evidence regarding past statements, policies, and associations for any undecideds that haven’t already made up their mind.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          11
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          3 months ago

          So was this man racist when he said the N-word or is your whole principle of charity thing demanding (your word last time) that we give the best possible interpretation here and say it was all an accident and he never meant to be racist?

          • Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            7
            ·
            3 months ago

            Declaring it an accident actually makes the argument ‘dude is racist’ stronger. If the N-word is used so often in your speech you utter it on camera by accident… yeah, that’s racist. I cannot see a charitable version implying the argument ‘dude is not racist for uttering the N-word, accidentally or not’, but I would entertain attempts in the interest of rational argumentation.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              9
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              3 months ago

              As the article says, his claim was that he “began to mispronounce the word ‘migrants’ and caught myself halfway through.”

              Based on your whole ‘principle of charity’ idea, isn’t it your duty to believe him?

              • Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                arrow-down
                8
                ·
                3 months ago

                Based on your whole ‘principle of charity’ idea, isn’t it your duty to believe him?

                No. The duty is to argue against the best version of his argument. For example: “Uttering the N-word in a racist manner is evidence I am a racist, I didn’t say the N-word, so this is not evidence I am a racist” fairly (side note: this may not be the best version of the argument so if someone concocts a better one I would attack that instead).

                In this example I would (and already did elsewhere) say “I listened to the tape and heard a hard-N so the premise ‘I didn’t say the N-word’ is false” so the rest of the argument collapses and the argument concludes “he said the N-word, so this IS evidence he is racist”.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  10
                  arrow-down
                  3
                  ·
                  3 months ago

                  Ah, I see, the “principle of charity” includes “I know when to be charitable and it’s when I feel like it.”

                  Interesting how you didn’t argue against the “best version” of “she became black.”